by Jaxon Reed
Stin stopped and stared into the shadows of an alley nearby, from which he had been hailed. Three men approached, all dressed in blue frocks and pants. They held their hands clasped behind their backs. Each wore a curious tall blue hat, at least a step high, giving their heads an elongated appearance in the dim light.
The three of them spread out and looked him up and down. Stin stood relaxed, but mentally he planned an escape route should things turn for the worse.
“You’re new here, are ye not?”
Stin nodded and said. “I am. I, uh, don’t have the pleasure of knowing you, nor how to properly address you.”
The leader smiled broadly. Stin’s comments seemed to please him greatly. He turned to the man on his right and said, “Y’ see? The officers know how to behave. Even if they don’t know how to respond correctly, they respond appropriately. Can’t say that about th’ common seadogs, though, can we?”
The other man said, “Aye, Gant. The officers are a finer lot, no doubt.”
He turned back to Stin and said, “I am Gant, head o’ th’ Constabulary.”
“Constabulary? How does a constable occupy his time in a town full of pirates, may I ask?”
Gant smiled and said, “The officers don’t associate with th’ riff-raff, and we make sure th’ dogs don’t wander into th’ nicer parts of town. The sea lords pay us to keep th’ peace precisely because it is a town full of pirates.”
At the mention of the sea lords, Gant nodded his head in the general direction of the great houses on the mountaintops outside town, his tall hat making a pronounced thrust in their direction.
Stin nodded, suddenly understanding some of the political dynamics in play within Corsairs Cove.
“I see. Well tell me, my good man, where might a fresh young officer find a drink around here, and mayhap a game of chance?”
“Ah! You want Berti’s Pub. Yes indeed. I tell you what, I need to check on my men in that quarter of town anyways. Why don’t I show ye th’ way and ye can tell me all about your voyage?”
-+-
For someone used to anonymity, Stin began to realize no such thing existed in Corsairs Cove. Everybody seemed to know everybody. And because they didn’t know him, they quickly deduced his identity: the newest officer who had found the gold hidden on the Lightfish.
So it came to pass everyone in Berti’s knew who he was shortly after Gant brought him in. And since the gold was being spread around town quite liberally by Wavecrest’s crew, Stin found himself a very popular fellow indeed.
Berti’s proved to be a fine establishment. It seemed clean and relatively quiet; not nearly as boisterous as the public houses down by the docks. At this, Stin sighed in mild disappointment.
A young, attractive couple performed in the corner, the fellow on a lute while the lady sang in a beautiful contralto. Several men stood around the couple listening, snifters in hand.
Stin decided these must be men of a higher caliber than the “riff-raff,” as Constable Gant called them. They were dressed nicer, spoke finer words, and drank more expensive alcohol.
Forced to mingle, Stin found himself caring little for their company. He preferred the hustle and bustle and press of humanity that he imagined the dockside taverns offered. Places where no one would see him pick pockets during a game of bone cards.
He spent time in idle conversation with other officers while dreaming of ways to get down to the seedier parts of town. The constables would not pose too much difficulty, he decided. Simply crossing over by rooftop should avoid them. However, as he reflected on the dilemma, he realized he would likely be recognized by his fellow mates from Wavecrest. He wondered how they would respond if they saw him in the wrong part of town.
There was the matter of clothing, too. He was dressed too fine for a dock worker. He could change into a mendicant’s outfit perhaps, but to return to Widow Raynora’s house he would need to don his current attire once more. It would do no good to show up at her door dressed inappropriately.
Stin was shaken from his reveries by the clinking of gold from tables in the back. He excused himself from conversing with the group, and wandered toward the sound of somebody pulling coins across a table.
The table in question was surrounded by smart-looking men and finely dressed women. Stin suspected some of the ladies must be rather expensive prostitutes, based on the quality and flesh-revealing style of their clothing.
The table itself held four men playing a game of cards. The winner of the most recent round stacked his coins and Stin caught his breath. The man had won at least a dozen gold coins, and a couple dozen silver ones, adding to his already considerable pile.
The other three men also had substantial piles of gold and silver. He quickly scanned the back of the room. Two more tables held games, one with six players and the other with four. Three of the players at the other tables were women. Coins stood stacked in front of each player.
“Not surprised to see you here. Sound of gold drew you in, I suppose. Like a moth to a flame.”
Stin turned to find Melton standing next to him, holding a snifter of brandy in one hand, the other clasped behind his back. The wooden leg had a fine leather shoe strapped to it, matching the one on Melton’s good foot. Stin had not heard him walk up.
“Hello, Melton. You clean up well.”
Melton guffawed, and Stin realized this marked the first time he had seen the surly first mate smile.
“You know rotten well I stay clean aboard ship. It’s on land I let me hair down. Iffen I had any.”
He pointed to his receding hairline. Stin smiled and said, “You have a sense of humor, too. Will wonders never cease?”
Melton looked back with a hint of merriment in his eyes, and Stin suspected the brandy might be helping to lighten his mood.
“You can’t let the men get too close, Steck. You have to keep your distance. Make sure they respect you. Nice job finding that gold bunk, by the way. You made all of us much richer this trip. When you first came aboard I had little hope for you. But I pegged you wrong.”
He stamped his peg leg down on the floor, emphasizing the pun. Stin smiled in acknowledgment of the wordplay, then turned his attention back to the table. Melton followed with his eyes and said, “You know Primero?”
Stin shook his head.
Melton said, “It’s more a game of skill, unlike bone cards which is almost pure chance. In Primero, men vie to produce higher combinations of cards, then use their wits in bids with one another.”
They watched as one of the players shuffled the cards, then dealt out a hand of four to each player. All the men placed a gold coin in the middle of the table before looking at their draw. The dealer placed several cards face down on the table, and one face up. The players began a round of negotiations, with more coins going into the pile. The dealer turned another of the cards on the table face up, then a new round of negotiations commenced, with more coins flowing to the center.
Finally, the last round of negotiations complete, each player then revealed his cards. The winner laughed in triumph and pulled in the coins.
Stin furrowed his brows and said, “How do they decide who wins?”
“The hands are ranked. Four of the same card is highest, that’s a quartet. A fluxus occurs when all are the same suit. Three-of-a-kind, then two-of-a-kind are next. The player with the highest points prevails, and royal cards count as ten. The deuce counts as twelve; the trey, 13; the four, 14; the five, 15.
“Then it gets tricky. The eins is worth 16 points. But the six and seven are even higher, at 18 and 21 points. So, four sevens counts as 84 points.”
They watched as the men deposited their initial coins for the first round of bidding on the next hand.
“There can be some deception in the bidding process. You’d like it.”
Stin looked at Melton, and found the peg-legged pirate smiling at him. He said, “Thanks. I think.”
A couple of the women from the other table stood up and left. Melt
on said, “Come on. They’re playing for copper over there. It’ll be a good place to learn, you can’t lose as much.”
-+-
Dawn glowed tentatively in the east as Stin made his way back to the Widow Raynora’s place. A constable tipped his elongated hat at him as he entered the neighborhood. He asked the young man for directions, since it was only his second time to go there. The constable, apparently bored at this late hour, accompanied him the rest of the way.
Despite Melton’s assurances, Stin had in fact lost more than three gold at the low stakes Primero table. But he had won some hands. He felt certain if he had been able to play longer he might have had a chance to break even.
The problem, Stin decided, was that cheating proved very difficult. Berti kept a house mage who monitored the games for magic. Even worse, most of the games had onlookers who kept an additional eye on things.
He woke up around noon and had lunch with the widow and Quent and other officers. Quent dragged him away from the conversation after the meal, explaining he had to show Stin the city.
Quent led him toward the middle of town, where a tall bronze statue of Gloomis stared out majestically toward the sea.
Stin said, “It looks very clean. I presume it’s as old as the city.”
“Mm. There’s a spell on it to keep birds off and make sure it stays shiny.”
Vendors plied Town Center, hawking food and wares. It was noisy and smelly and crowded. Finally Stin found a place ideal for picking pockets. Rich and poor, young and old, officers and seadogs all milled together in the central marketplace. Stin picked up a handful of silver in no time.
The moment he decided a couple more hours in the marketplace would erase his losses from the Primero table, Quent interrupted his thoughts.
“Let’s visit that shop I was telling you about.”
He led Stin toward the market’s periphery, and soon they wandered among storefronts facing the street, where larger things were sold like wagons and barrels. Quent kept going, and the farther from the market and Gloomis’s statue they ventured, the more dilapidated the storefronts became.
Eventually they reached a dark alleyway, far from the other stores.
“We’re in the old part of the city, now. Nothing’s been reworked here since Gloomis’s day.”
The stones were no longer white, but grime-encrusted. It looked like nothing had been scrubbed in well over a century, Stin thought.
Back in the shadows, at the far end of the alley, a tattered door hung open propped on its hinges. Quent led the way inside, Stin reluctantly following. His eyes took a moment to adjust in the lower light.
Both walls to the right and left were filled with shelves holding all manner of knickknacks. Pills, potions, and odd books lay scattered about. One bottle appeared to have a small bolt of lightning captured inside. It zipped and zapped, the light reflecting off other objects nearby. Another bottle, held flat between two stands, had a miniature ship floating in what looked like a storm, complete with tiny rainfall, waves, and wind.
This one caught Stin’s eye, and he watched in fascination as the little storm tossed and turned the ship inside the bottle for several minutes.
Other items Stin identified on the shelves included human skulls; teeth from some giant marine creature; a large fish skeleton taking up most of one wall; jars of magical reagents; a golden tiara that seemed to shift and become silver for a minute before shifting back to gold again, then copper, then tin, then gold again; and a giant black bullfrog the size of a puppy. The frog stared at him while its throat blew up in a round bubble, then slowly deflated.
At last, Stin noticed the proprietor. Behind a counter, a little old man stared at them. His brown skin marked him as a native of Crystal. He had wispy white hair and a prominent chin that stuck out past his nose. But his most striking feature were his eyes. They sparkled in the dusky interior of the shop, lighting up the air around the man’s face.
Those bright eyes caught Stin’s, and held them for a long moment. The old man’s face creased into a grin.
“Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to Ye Olde Shoppe of Heart’s Desire.”
Chapter 10
Oldstone said, “So. Let me get this straight. Controlling your dreams is the secret to defeating your mind monster?”
Mita nodded. She sat in Greystone’s dining alcove, his facsimile servants having just placed breakfast on the table for them. A bowl of milk appeared on the floor for Deedles, who expressed her gratitude by purring and spreading warm waves of love and happiness throughout the room.
Greystone said, “It’s my theory that the monster, in whatever form it takes, is merely a product of the wizard’s subconscious. It preys on the weakest part of his magical constitution.”
“Or her,” Mita said. Greystone nodded.
Oldstone stroked his beard thoughtfully and said, “We have records of some early wizards being killed by these things. It’s intriguing to think it all centers around their self-doubts.”
“One of the first rules of magic is believing you can do it,” Greystone said. “That’s true even more so with wizards.”
“And if you can’t believe in it, if you have that much power,” Mita said, “it could be deadly.”
Oldstone nodded, and chewed a piece of ham. Swallowing it, he said, “I suppose it makes sense. I considered the battles with my mind monster a blessing in disguise later, because I learned how to cast powerful spells without using my arm and hand. However, looking back, I can see that was a weakness of sorts. A limitation that I overcame.
“This brings up an interesting new set of observations, though. If controlling your dreams was your biggest self-perceived weakness, you must be more powerful than anyone alive. Myself included.”
Mita blushed. “That’s yet to be proven, Master.”
Oldstone nodded and said, “Yes, but it will be. I wish we could put you through the trials before our upcoming confrontation. But, you won’t be able to commence the trials without a stone, and the darkstone is not yet available for claiming. And it will remain unavailable until its current possessor is dead.”
Silence filled the room as Mita weighed the momentousness of his statement.
Greystone said, “Well, we’ll just have to defeat the bastard, take the stone from him, and give it to Mita.”
He shoved away his plate, and one of his facsimile servant girls rushed over to retrieve it. Watching her leave the room, he said, “Let’s get out there and do it.”
Mita followed the two wizards out the door, leaving the cat on her own. A long line of metal men stretched up and down the street, arms lax and heads bent down. Most of the townspeople studiously avoided the giants, taking pains to go between them with the most space possible on either side, or simply avoiding the contraptions altogether.
“I must say,” Oldstone said, “the blacksmiths you borrowed have truly outdone themselves.”
Greystone nodded happily, and said, “We weren’t able to salvage them all. Some of the devastation wreaked on them by Mita and Theena’s facsimile left a few irreparable. But, we were able to find enough pieces to remake most of them.”
“It should provide an adequate force necessary to retake Emerald, seeing as how their human army is quite depleted at the moment.”
“Indeed,” Greystone said. “All we need to do is take care of their wizard.”
He turned to smiled at Mita and said, “That’s where you come in, my dear.”
-+-
Kirt stood once more with Bellasondra and Bartimo in the Hall of Commerce. They waited patiently as the scribe made annotations in his ledger. Groups of armed men waited in line with chests of gold.
The leader of each group announced to the scribe which house he represented. The scribe consulted his parchment and called forth the petitioners, who each received their allotment of gold from the families who had agreed to fund their ventures. The scribe recorded each transaction and the next family approached.
Some of the pet
itioners attended alone, their relatively small sums not requiring guards. Bartimo had hired six armed guards to carry their chest for them. They were thick-necked and short-haired men, stout and gruff looking. Each carried a wicked-looking curved sword on their waistbelt.
Soon, the last family approached the scribe and distributed their gold. Everyone broke up, those with large amounts leading their respective guards out of the hall.
Bartimo, Bellasondra and Kirt led their men down the steps to Horse and the cart. Bartimo directed the men to place the chest in the middle of the cart. It groaned in protest as the weight of a thousand gold coins settled on its boards while Bellasondra climbed into the driver’s seat and took Horse’s reins.
A cheery, female voice rang out. “Hi Bartimo!”
Everyone turned to see the white-haired Finero and his beautiful young daughter approaching.
“Hello, Phanissa.”
Kirt looked between Bartimo and Finero’s daughter. He noted Bartimo ignored the old man. Phanissa seemed very attractive. High cheekbones. Shiny dark hair falling down in waves to her waist. Her bright white dress suggested wealth. Her olive skin, tanned by the sun, marked her as a native islander.
A long silence ensued as they stared in each others eyes. Kirt swiveled his head between them, wondering why Bartimo seemed to stop everything and give this girl his undivided attention.
Finally, Finero put a fist to his mouth and coughed abruptly, breaking the spell. He said, “Bartimo, since my house has funded half the cost of your venture, I’ve come to see you personally. I thought you might not mind if I make sure you get off to a proper start.”
“Oh, absolutely, sir. I thank you for your faith in me. I fully expect all of us to profit quite well in this venture. I will do my best to bring a good return to all the families who have placed their trust, and their gold, with us.”
“Yes, yes. I’m sure you’ll do very well. I would expect nothing less. Your father was a good trader, too.”
